I first discovered Welcome to Night Vale during one of my many endless scroll sessions on Tumblr. I kept seeing Night Vale fan art, so I downloaded the podcast and well, my life hasn’t been the same since.

If you don’t know…

“WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.”

The writing is quite brilliant and very very strange. There’s a heavy H.P. Lovecraft influence except it’s light on the serious and heavy on the funny (despite the odd and terrifying events that happen in Night Vale).

The Night Vale fan community is filed with some of the most creative people I’ve encountered in any fandom. I originally just wanted to share a few pieces of fan art but somehow ended up with 50… whoops!

“It seems that all over Night Vale, books have simply ceased functioning. The scientists are studying one of the broken books to see if they can understand just what is going on here. The exact problem is currently unclear, but some of the words being used include ‘sparks,’ ‘meat smell,’ ‘biting,’ and ‘lethal gas.’ For your own safety, please do not attempt to open a book until we have more information on the nature and cause of these problems.”
– Welcome to Night Vale Episode Three “Station Management” By purinrinrin

Hello hottiness! Come join The TV Geeks for a texting and scones date. We talk about the Doctor Who season 6 finale “The Wedding of River Song” and our favorite and least favorite episodes of the season and more! Oh and there’s a fantastic Doctor Who shirt contest with Threadless! Visit this post to enter.

Donations:

All money donated will go directly to hosting, software, security, etc. for The TV Geeks Podcast. Running a blog and podcast really starts to add up so any donations no matter how small are greatly appreciated. If you donate we’ll give you a shout out on the podcast and in the post!

Okay, well of course we all miss us some Peter Bishop but we really want to know where Charlie Francis is. (It’s an insider, listen to this episode to find out.) This was actually a really fun podcast to record, probably because Fringe is back, but Peter isn’t… well sort of.

In this episode we talk about Fringe episode 401 “Neither Here Nor There” and the new comic Beyond the Fringe written by Pacey, I mean Peter, I mean Joshua Jackson. Contact us at thetvgeekspodcast[at]gmail.com to send in written, audio feedback or LOLcats!

Donations:

All money donated will go directly to hosting, software, security, etc. for The TV Geeks Podcast. Running a blog and podcast really starts to add up so any donations no matter how small are greatly appreciated. If you donate we’ll give you a shout out on the podcast and in the post!

YAY! Check out The TV Geeks very first podcast! In this episode we give a little introduction to the podcast and what Terence and I will be talking about, which is basically good ass genre TV such as Fringe, The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, etc. and we go over 21 questions for the upcoming season of Fringe. Contact us at thetvgeekspodcast[at]gmail.com to send in written or audio feedback or LOLcats!

Donations:

All money donated will go directly to hosting, software, security, etc. for The TV Geeks Podcast. Running a blog and podcast really starts to add up so any donations no matter how small are greatly appreciated. If you donate we’ll give you a shout out on the podcast and in the post!

I’ve been in a Lovecraftian mood recently and stumbled upon of the best podcasts I’ve ever laid ears on. It’s the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast. It is nowhere near new but I had to share this discovery with you all. Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer are the hosts and they do an outstanding job.

Even though many Lovecrafts stories are short, they are also dense and this helps readers untangle their way and better understand and hopefully appreciate Lovecraft. Each week they go over one or two of his stories and to be honest you don’t even need to reread or even read the stories prior to the podcast. They give an in-depth summary and discuss the background of the story, history and things of that nature. But what makes me love this podcast so much is it’s actually funny. They made me literally LOL.

Something else I like is that if they don’t like a story, they say it and they say why. They love Lovecraft but also say whether they think a story is good or bad, they don’t blindly believe everything is gold. They also address Lovecrafts overt racism in his stories. You can download them (free of course) on iTunes or visit their website HPpodcast.com and listen and download them there. They are on currently Episode 52 but I’ve started from the beginning and I’m on Episode 13.

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN INCEPTION I HIGHLY SUGGEST THAT YOU DON’T CONTINUE READING THIS POST UNTIL YOU DO BECAUSE CRUCIAL ELEMENTS OF THE PLOT AND CHARACTERS WILL BE REVEALED AND DISCUSSED IN THIS POST!

InceptionInceptionInception… I barely know where to start. Once again if you haven’t seen the film and are staunchly against spoiler alerts, then stop reading right now, walk to your local theater (IMAX preferably) watch Inception, and then read this post (and comment). It will still be here waiting for you. I am writing this assuming everyone watched Inception already so I won’t bother to attempt to write a condensed and probably confusing summary. If you need one read the wiki.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I am a fan of Chris Nolan’s films and I think the world is a better place with his versions of Batman and Inception did not disappoint. The cinematography was nothing short of amazing and I’m glad Nolan didn’t whore himself out and jump on the 3D trend. The no-gravity fight scenes were some of my favorite! Not many films stay with me after the theater and Inception definitely did that.

What I loved about it so much was the ending, which ironically enough is why a lot of people hated it or didn’t get it. Yes everyone is entitled to their own opinion blah blah blah, but I think these people didn’t like it because Inception made them feel uncomfortable. By uncomfortable I mean that the film doesn’t spell out for you its meaning and more importantly it doesn’t give you a definite ending. We have been conditioned by eons of storytelling that there is always a beginning, middle and end which is told in a linear fashion. It wasn’t really until postmodernism arose in literature, and consequently film and media, that authors/filmmakers started to stray from the linear method of storytelling. Nolan’s Momento is a perfect example of a postmodern film and of course so is Inception.

Another part of the film that I loved, and the haters hated the most, was the ending. Does the top fall? Does it keep spinning? Is he dreaming or not? And Nolan goes all Sopranos finale on us and give us a big black screen. We as an audience are used to being told the ending of a film, but not this time. He gives the viewer power many filmmakers never do; the power to make your own decision about the ending. I think he was dreaming of course. If the big secret is that Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) wasn’t dreaming that would be very lame. I also don’t think that the essential question of Inception is if Cobb was dreaming or not but rather, what part of the film is a dream and what part is reality? Or taking it even further, was the entire film a dream and if so whose dream is it?

Now this isn’t going to be one of those reviews that I, the writer, has devised a theory and stands fully behind it. If you were expecting that sorry guys. I will admit I have to watch Inception at least one more time and catch details I may not have noticed before because I have way too many questions still (see below). I hear theories and may consider them but then something always comes up to contradict the theory and I’m back to where I started.

But this is what I do believe. The fact that there isn’t a clear-cut theory or ending tells me that the message of Inception (what Nolan wants the viewer to get from the film) isn’t in the theories or ending. I believe through Inception Nolan was planting an idea in our minds. Nolan is an auteur and he shows us through the film that although an individual may not be experiencing “reality” or something true, the emotions they feel from their experiences in that false reality are real. Just like Robert Fischer, jr. (Cillian Murphy) picked up that windmill in his fathers safe and cried and felt his father truly loved him; that was a false reality but very real emotions. He woke up with the inception. Another example is at the end of the film when Cobb is finally reunited with his children and you as the viewer feel his happiness, but then we wonder is he still dreaming? Whether he is or not, Cobb’s happiness is real.

Nolan wants Inception to do the same thing to us. We experience the film, connect with the characters, question parts of the film, maybe question the entire film, and leave the theater with the ideas from the film implanted our minds. Some consciously and some unconsciously. Therefore the film Inception is an inception itself.

I think the essential question we (or at least I) left the theater thinking was how do I know what I am experiencing is reality? Like the characters in Inception they didn’t realize they were dreaming until they woke up or until someone in their dream, like Cobb, tells them it’s a dream. Trying to even explain what reality is without using the word “real” proves itself difficult. Try it. Yeah I know, isn’t as easy as you thought. How do we know what we perceive as reality is in fact just that?

We do see reality during the film, but Cobb is still in a dream at the end of the film.

We do see reality during the film and Cobb is in reality at the end of the film.

Questions Questions Questions: Okay so I have a some questions about a few things that happened in the film. If you have an answer or theory comment and let’s discuss!

When Cobb and Mal (Marion Cotillard) were in limbo they were there for about 50 years and grew old together. But after he did the inception on Mal and they laid down on the train tracks to kill themselves/wake up and they were young. I don’t understand that. If they were in limbo until they were old wouldn’t they have been old when they killed themselves? Some people say it’s a plot hole but I think it’s way too big for it to be a plot hole. Some people say it was Cobb’s dream. What do you think?

In the first layer of Fischer’s dream, when Eames (Tom Hardy) tells Arthur something like “You gotta dream bigger” and pulls out the bigger gun, did he think that into existence? Is it because he’s a forger? If so why wouldn’t he think up all sorts of weapons to use against the projection army? Or did he just think it was a witty line and he had the gun the whole time?

When Cobb woke up from the chemically induced sleep by Yusuf (Dileep Rao) he’s in the bathroom splashing his face and drops his totem (the top) and Saito (Ken Watanabe) picks it up. Now if you remember in the scene with Ariadne (Ellen Page) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Arthur tells her not to let anyone touch her totem because only she can be aware of its weight. So since Saito touched Cobb’s totem does it lose its value?

Also the top wasn’t Cobb’s totem, it was Mal’s, so does it even work for Cobb?

If the dream they enter at the end of the film belongs to Fisher Jr., then why does Cobb enter the limbo he built with his wife? Shouldn’t it be Fisher Jr.’s limbo?

Why is Saito old in limbo and Cobb is young? Yes Saito was in there longer than Cobb but it seems if Saito is that old then Cobb should have aged more right?

What would your totem be?

After discussion with my friends on what our totem would be I decided mine would be pink lipstick, I’d change the weight of it somehow like Ariadne did with her chess piece. I picked lipstick because whenever I set foot in Sephora I end up with a lot less money than when I walked in, and pink because, well, I love PINK! Leave a comment below on what your totem would be and why?

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN INCEPTION I HIGHLY SUGGEST THAT YOU DON’T CONTINUE READING THIS POST UNTIL YOU DO BECAUSE CRUCIAL ELEMENTS OF THE PLOT AND CHARACTERS WILL BE REVEALED AND DISCUSSED IN THIS POST!

InceptionInceptionInception… I barely know where to start. Once again if you haven’t seen the film and are staunchly against spoiler alerts, then stop reading right now, walk to your local theater (IMAX preferably) watch Inception, and then read this post (and comment). It will still be here waiting for you. I am writing this assuming everyone watched Inception already so I won’t bother to attempt to write a condensed and probably confusing summary. If you need one read the wiki.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I am a fan of Chris Nolan’s films and I think the world is a better place with his versions of Batman and Inception did not disappoint. The cinematography was nothing short of amazing and I’m glad Nolan didn’t whore himself out and jump on the 3D trend. The no-gravity fight scenes were some of my favorite! Not many films stay with me after the theater and Inception definitely did that.

What I loved about it so much was the ending, which ironically enough is why a lot of people hated it or didn’t get it. Yes everyone is entitled to their own opinion blah blah blah, but I think these people didn’t like it because Inception made them feel uncomfortable. By uncomfortable I mean that the film doesn’t spell out for you its meaning and more importantly it doesn’t give you a definite ending. We have been conditioned by eons of storytelling that there is always a beginning, middle and end which is told in a linear fashion. It wasn’t really until postmodernism arose in literature, and consequently film and media, that authors/filmmakers started to stray from the linear method of storytelling. Nolan’s Momento is a perfect example of a postmodern film and of course so is Inception.

Another part of the film that I loved, and the haters hated the most, was the ending. Does the top fall? Does it keep spinning? Is he dreaming or not? And Nolan goes all Sopranos finale on us and give us a big black screen. We as an audience are used to being told the ending of a film, but not this time. He gives the viewer power many filmmakers never do; the power to make your own decision about the ending. I think he was dreaming of course. If the big secret is that Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) wasn’t dreaming that would be very lame. I also don’t think that the essential question of Inception is if Cobb was dreaming or not but rather, what part of the film is a dream and what part is reality? Or taking it even further, was the entire film a dream and if so whose dream is it?

Now this isn’t going to be one of those reviews that I, the writer, has devised a theory and stands fully behind it. If you were expecting that sorry guys. I will admit I have to watch Inception at least one more time and catch details I may not have noticed before because I have way too many questions still (see below). I hear theories and may consider them but then something always comes up to contradict the theory and I’m back to where I started.

But this is what I do believe. The fact that there isn’t a clear-cut theory or ending tells me that the message of Inception (what Nolan wants the viewer to get from the film) isn’t in the theories or ending. I believe through Inception Nolan was planting an idea in our minds. Nolan is an auteur and he shows us through the film that although an individual may not be experiencing “reality” or something true, the emotions they feel from their experiences in that false reality are real. Just like Robert Fischer, jr. (Cillian Murphy) picked up that windmill in his fathers safe and cried and felt his father truly loved him; that was a false reality but very real emotions. He woke up with the inception. Another example is at the end of the film when Cobb is finally reunited with his children and you as the viewer feel his happiness, but then we wonder is he still dreaming? Whether he is or not, Cobb’s happiness is real.

Nolan wants Inception to do the same thing to us. We experience the film, connect with the characters, question parts of the film, maybe question the entire film, and leave the theater with the ideas from the film implanted our minds. Some consciously and some unconsciously. Therefore the film Inception is an inception itself.

I think the essential question we (or at least I) left the theater thinking was how do I know what I am experiencing is reality? Like the characters in Inception they didn’t realize they were dreaming until they woke up or until someone in their dream, like Cobb, tells them it’s a dream. Trying to even explain what reality is without using the word “real” proves itself difficult. Try it. Yeah I know, isn’t as easy as you thought. How do we know what we perceive as reality is in fact just that?

We do see reality during the film, but Cobb is still in a dream at the end of the film.

We do see reality during the film and Cobb is in reality at the end of the film.

Questions Questions Questions: Okay so I have a some questions about a few things that happened in the film. If you have an answer or theory comment and let’s discuss!

When Cobb and Mal (Marion Cotillard) were in limbo they were there for about 50 years and grew old together. But after he did the inception on Mal and they laid down on the train tracks to kill themselves/wake up and they were young. I don’t understand that. If they were in limbo until they were old wouldn’t they have been old when they killed themselves? Some people say it’s a plot hole but I think it’s way too big for it to be a plot hole. Some people say it was Cobb’s dream. What do you think?

In the first layer of Fischer’s dream, when Eames (Tom Hardy) tells Arthur something like “You gotta dream bigger” and pulls out the bigger gun, did he think that into existence? Is it because he’s a forger? If so why wouldn’t he think up all sorts of weapons to use against the projection army? Or did he just think it was a witty line and he had the gun the whole time?

When Cobb woke up from the chemically induced sleep by Yusuf (Dileep Rao) he’s in the bathroom splashing his face and drops his totem (the top) and Saito (Ken Watanabe) picks it up. Now if you remember in the scene with Ariadne (Ellen Page) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Arthur tells her not to let anyone touch her totem because only she can be aware of its weight. So since Saito touched Cobb’s totem does it lose its value?

Also the top wasn’t Cobb’s totem, it was Mal’s, so does it even work for Cobb?

If the dream they enter at the end of the film belongs to Fisher Jr., then why does Cobb enter the limbo he built with his wife? Shouldn’t it be Fisher Jr.’s limbo?

Why is Saito old in limbo and Cobb is young? Yes Saito was in there longer than Cobb but it seems if Saito is that old then Cobb should have aged more right?

What would your totem be?

After discussion with my friends on what our totem would be I decided mine would be pink lipstick, I’d change the weight of it somehow like Ariadne did with her chess piece. I picked lipstick because whenever I set foot in Sephora I end up with a lot less money than when I walked in, and pink because, well, I love PINK! Leave a comment below on what your totem would be and why?